Stewart MacDonald, M.D.

Most, if not all, the farmers grew their own wheat, which was ground into flour, shorts, cream of wheat, and bran. I never remember eating bran, which was fed to the pigs. We often used shorts in porridge and very seldom in shorts bread, but most of the shorts were fed

to the pigs.

Nearly every farm, if not all, raised cattle, pigs, sheep and hens. Farmers had from 6 to 20 cows. There were always copious amounts of butter, sour and sweet cream, and cottage cheese. No one could complain of hunger if there were lots of potatoes and all the butter one needed on the table. Mutton was often available in the fall, espe— cially at the digging of the potatoes. I can still taste the firm biscuits made with cream and sheep fat. Cows and steers were killed later in the fall when the frost came to preserve the meat. The taste of the homemade sausages “Maragams” (pronounced Marrocks) still lingers on in my mind as well as the taste of pothead meat. Later on, cows and pigs were killed and what was not used as fresh meat was salted and barrelled for salt beef and pork to have in the summer. We also had a quintal (pronounced cantle and equal to 1 12 pounds) of codfish. There would be a small barrel of herring for winter but we had fresh

fish in the summer.

There were numerous bottles of preserved fruit. There would be actual buckets of raspberries, strawbern'es, blueberries, gooseberries, and rhubarb stored in the cel- lar. Those always tasted good in our school lunches.

The wool from the sheep would be washed, put on the fences, and then sorted and sent to the carding mill in Sturgeon. The wool would be spun at home and used for socks, mittens, and sweaters. That meant many hours of spinning and knitting. I can still remember my mother setting up the loom and making many yards of cloth to

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